The feeling is mutual
Lately, my “job” (what I get paid for) and my “work” (what I do because I think it’s important) have edged so far apart that they’re starting to feel like opposites. I’ve always had a vague, privileged-white-person sense that I want to be doing good for the world, and since at least my mid-twenties I’ve been able to talk about how my job meets that bar, bent and twisted by capitalist logic though it may be.
But that justification is feeling increasingly hollow about my current job, which I won’t describe in detail out of great respect for the smart and dedicated people doing it and similar things. But I zoomed into a training this week where 28 dedicated, professional public servants learned about how to appropriately document that the grant money they’re receiving to help people is in fact going to people eligible to receive that help. I’ve worked on many such programs, and this documentation is always burdensome. The many, many person-hours professionals spend learning how to do it correctly, doing it, and proving that they’ve done it correctly are an obvious and necessary expense of helping people. We have to make sure the right help is going to the right people...right?
Then there’s the work I’ve been doing (I’ve noticed I now call it my “real work” in my head), mainly with St. Louis Mutual Aid. This includes talking with many people who are building networks of neighbors - all of whom have some resources and need some resources - and trying to match up the needs with the haves as much as possible. A few are acting in a professional capacity, but most are just community members, like me, who believe that our lives are enriched by sharing what we have without expectation and asking for what we need without shame. On a theoretical level, this is radical - it’s stepping outside of capitalism and commodification and colonialism and building something fundamentally new. It’s rejecting the concept of scarcity I wrote about last month and the structure based on it. But on a practical level, it’s so easy. It’s literally just telling people what you need and accepting it when they give it, then asking them what they need and believing them when they answer you. No webinar on documenting their documentation, no 60-page funding proposal with executed MOUs and 2-year staffing projection.
Yes, there is organization required to manage the logistics of transferring resources. But for me, it’s the kind of organization that feels good - the kind where you get to connect to people who share your values and talk about the easiest and best way to uphold them. I get off those zoom calls feeling hopeful and energized, not distracted and numb.
And yes, there is the question of where the resources come from. But so far, it has just come from people like me who feel like we have too much of something and want to see it put to better use...and so far, those resources haven’t run out.
The real obstacle though, is an emotional one. It’s trust. It’s feeling that you can say what you need without being judged, and it’s withholding judgment when people tell you what they need. Our culture and our society do not prepare us for this. They tell us to do the opposite - to accumulate and protect resources, not share them, and to broadcast what we have, not talk about what we need. The reason I think we - individually and collectively - can overcome this totalizing individualist message is simple: because it feels bad. My job, as a cog in a machine built by capitalism to help people who are being trampled by capitalism, feels bad. My work, as a human among other humans who care about humanity, feels good. My next challenge: find ways to expand this work and this good into my job and everything else.
Circles
I’ve heard that some Mutual Aid groups use the terminology of “circles” to describe their structure, rather than “committees” or “teams,” and I like it. We started the Administrative Circle as a place to share updates and make decisions across the network, and since then I’ve been noticing circles all over the place. So I’m going to indulge in a random list of things.
This quote, partly misattributed to e. e. cummings but apparently taken from art by Corita Kent, popped up on my WeCroak app and may be my favorite so far:
Damn everything but the circus! e.e. cummings. ...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy. That won’t throw it’s heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence. S. Helen Kelley
A new friend recommended the practice of “circling” in education and restorative justice, and I’m intrigued.
Arguments about the benefits of “buying local” and investing in your community are not new, but this conversation about circular economies really got me.
Ernest Burgess and the “Chicago school” of sociology made a concentric circle model of cities - again, not new, but it’s still relevant to urban planning today. I found a pretty good summary of it here.
Geometry was one of my favorite subjects ever (thanks to the late Virginia Highstone), so I can’t end this list without noting at least one way that circles - not as a metaphor, but as a mathematical ideal - are amazing: pi.
Other Interesting Bits
For further reading on the idea of community interdependence underlying my first reflection above, I strongly recommend this edition of Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter.
As someone with a lot of good and bad things to say about public housing in this country, I was glad to see some fresh takes on it.
If you’re interested in urban displacement and haven’t tried this Zillow trick yet, you should - you can see where buildings used to be that are now highways, parking lots, or nothing at all.
I’ve been telling everyone who will listen about two On Being episodes recommended to me lately: this one with Alain de Botton about love and this one with Resmaa Menakem about race.